Monday Mental Tip: Destructive Deductions

Monday mental health tip. Monday mental health tip. I'm singing and yelling a word tip at the end

of that. So everybody, everyone loves that. I don't know. That's what the surveys show. The

phone lines are lighting up with people who love that. I think I don't have time to answer them

now. Plus, it's probably not about the program because no one knows when I'm recording.

So welcome back to the broken brain. I'm Dwight. And this is our Monday mental health tip to share

today. I wanted to share a couple of things about how do we make decisions, particularly

decisions of a predictive diagnostic nature about what is going on in our lives. That's the teaser.

Let me quick mention before we get into that. This month's charity of note, as we do every month,

we highlight a charity and let everyone know about it and the good work that they're doing so that

you can support or get involved. And if you happen to be a patron supporter or if you join,

whenever you do join, the charity that was highlighted in the month, you join will receive 50%

of your donations for as long as you are one, as long as you are a patron. If you are able to go

to patreon.com slash broken brain and support the show, that's great. If you just like to subscribe,

as a free subscriber, you will get a couple of little little things going on there as well,

such as you'll be able to view the video of each of the interviews that we do that we have a video

captured. I always make those available on the patreon and they are going out to any patreon

subscribers. So paid or otherwise. So I guess technically if you're free, 50% of your donation will

also go because 50% is zero zero. But if you'd like to be involved in that and support the show,

then do that. Please. And thank you. And this month our highlighted charity is churla chr al a go

to churla.org to learn more about the coalition for humane immigrant rights. This is always a very

important cause. I'd say currently a very important cause that you'll see we're having a lot of

issues around rights and such for immigrants in the United States in particular. Watch the news.

If you don't watch the news, I'm sure you've heard about it. So churla does a lot of work to help

support immigrants. You can go there to learn about to donate to share information. And yeah,

get involved with that. I find that when we know about these kind of organizations, if you go

and you can participate every little bit helps. If you can just I'm going to say if you can just

give a dollar, just pretend that there's a million people out there who are also wondering if that

is enough to give. And you want to be part of that. And what is the percentage that we'll give the

dollar? And if you can't, please share doesn't cost us anything to share. So all right. Now here's

our little mental health tip. I want to talk about what do we ascribe judgment to when we are trying

to judge what's going on kind of with our lives or or what things we are worried about? What

information do we gather that we think will answer those questions? And this is where I call it

diagnostic. Am I trying to diagnose a situation? For example, do I walk into work? And I see

my boss glance at their watch or do they look at me in a way that I interpret as, hmm, am I,

am I late? Is something? Are they grumpy with me? What's going on? And maybe look at my watch.

By the way, in this scenario, we're all wearing watches. So maybe you actually look at your smartphone

or whatever. And so you see that it's like, well, I am three minutes late. But why are they

upset with me if we're being three minutes late? Oh my gosh, where do they come off getting mad at me?

You know what? It was just because I had to park so far and walk and they don't want me to park

in right next to the building. Anyway, so now you can see I'm really down a rabbit hole at that

point. I have attributed some type of meaning to my boss's facial expression. I have now started to

make decisions of my own reactions that are going to be emotionally reactive. That is based off of

that idea that I got that may or may not be wrong. That's a pretty obvious example. But how many

times throughout our day do we see things or interpret things or think things that we think means

that someone hates us or that bad things are going to happen or whatever it is. And here's the tricky

thing. We're not always wrong. But we also are not always focused on something that is going to end

up being useful. What if that look did mean they're mad at me? Well, I don't know why I don't know

what it means. And they'll either share it with me or they never will. And if it's the type of

relationship where that can exist, like in a cowork relationship. And I never find out why I

got that look, but I don't get in trouble. That's actually okay. That's all right. Or if it's a

more deeper or intimate type of friendship or relationship. And they, you know, we may have to

talk it out. We may have to ask some questions. But I do not have any information yet is the idea.

And if I'm correct in what I assume, and it's not useful, then I'm going to may overly focus on

if it's incorrect, still not useful. And I'm going to overly focus on that. So trying conclusions

from things that are non-conclusive. At some psychologists study what they call attribution,

which is the psychological dynamic of deciding why things happen. And to put it in and maybe over

simplified terms, it's almost like there is a little question going on the back of our brain

all the time. And that is saying, why did that happen? Or why did I do that? Or why did someone

else do that? Or why did I, whatever? Theoretically, right? It's like, why did I walk in this room?

Maybe I, you know, don't remember until I walk out of it. Then I desperately remember and need to

go back into it. Or why am I sitting in this chair? Now many times the answer is so simple. This is

not even a conscious process. Why am I sitting in this chair? I was sitting in this chair. This is

where I sit. There. That's a reason. Boom. That process, if you, if you think of it like that

process is going on all the time. Then what do we attribute something to? Now we usually notice

it was something jars us out of this sort of pre-programmed, less conscious focus. In other words,

the boss or someone does a thing or I don't hear back from someone right away or my car made a noise

or whatever it is. So when that happens and it's jarring and we go, why did that happen? Then

our brain is going to try to come up with something and it's important to think of it this way.

The answer is not as likely to be correct as it is likely to satisfy the question. What I mean by

that is our brain doesn't know what's happening. We can't read minds. We can't tell the future.

And sometimes we are aware on some level that some big, huge, bad piece of news is not the most

likely outcome. However, when we are finding something to attribute something to something that

is correct is never as powerful as something that feels emotionally relevant and sometimes that

relevance comes from fear. Once again, could be correct, could be not, but my anxiety is going to

fill up the silence, a large portion of the time. And so then we are making decisions and reactions

based off of information that is not based on anything. So once again, don't get hung up on whether

or not it's correct. If it's correct, you really need to verify it some other way. So there's

a couple of ways to do that. One is to institute sort of a 24 hour rule in the situations where

this is possible. So in other words, if I see something and it means something and there's no way

for me to investigate it or do anything and it wouldn't be appropriate for me to confront it

or anything, I need a way to day or so and try not to let it rule my thoughts until I can make a

little more decision. Getting more information and reminding myself that I don't have the

information is another technique for this to say, you know, I don't know yet what my boss thought.

And so I got to wait and see if they say something. It might not be healthy as to go and talk to them.

Are we very, very close to where I feel like we can do that? Different situation. But I'd say most

of the time, I'm going to wait a minute, see what happens. Do I gather more information and sometimes

more information comes just from waiting? Then there's the other side of more information,

which is, can I ask, is it the kind of situation where my car made a noise and I could go get it checked

or I could ask somebody I know who really knows cars or I could look it up online. That's one of the

questions that is sometimes actually good for various like Google Reddit or whatever, sometimes.

But can I do anything that is a healthy thing to help gather a little more information?

This is very tricky when it involves other people because sometimes we can, you know, if we're having

an anxious pattern, we can pepper someone with questions over and over again and they might not

love that. But that becomes an issue for communication. That always is usually better to get more

information if we can. So anyway, those are a couple of things. So think about that. Gather

information where we can. Pause for more information before making decisions. And if ever possible,

try to reframe our thoughts to say, I need to try not to think about this till tomorrow. See how I

feel then. So those are a couple of things. There's obviously lots more that we can do to try to live

in the present, try to live in the moment, try not to overinterpret. So that's an interesting little

thought for your Monday. So at least I think it's interesting. Hope you agree. Call today and let me

know if you agree. Write your letters into the broken brain. Your broken brain is a podcast here to

help and to provide information. I wanted to get one more little plug for charities. Like I said,

we're following up with the coalition for humane immigrant rights, sure, let dot org. And I'm always

open to hear about whatever charities that you know of, especially if they are local to your area

and they might not be well known, please reach out. You can go to DwightHers.com and fill out the

contact form. You can email me at DwightHers.gmail.com or just, you know, I don't know, a release

carrier pigeon, whatever it is that you prefer to communicate by. All right, thanks everybody.

There'll be a new episode out tomorrow. Bye.